Black Friday: Tips for the Best Email Marketing Campaign

04.Nov.2020 Keerthana Selvakumar - Seasonal

Time flows by just like that. Especially for Ecommerce businesses who have to be on top of the game all the time. One moment you blink and there you go. You have lost one more shopper. It feels like only yesterday when you finished your Holiday season 2019. But here it is! Holiday season 2020 is here and it’s time to dust off those brushes to create the perfect Black Friday Email Templates for the most converting Black Friday Email Marketing Campaigns. 

It’s very hard to stand out from your competitors every single time you initiate an email campaign. Especially during holidays like Black Friday when your customers’ inboxes are overflowing with emails for every brand with special Black Friday discounts and promotions. 

Don’t worry! Just follow our steps and you’ll create the amazing Black Friday Email Templates. Gear up Email Marketers. It’s time to design the perfect Black Friday email templates for the best Black Friday email marketing campaign. 

Plan ahead

Holiday season 2020 will be very different for Ecommerce retailers. The Black Friday weekend will be even more important than any other holiday season in the past.

Your customers will be receiving so many offers during the holiday season. To stand out from the rest, you have to set clear goals. This will help you build a winning strategy that targets your core audience. Gather data from last year’s holiday season to analyze what worked and what didn’t work. 

Ask yourself:

• What did you do last year for the Black Friday weekend that really worked or even didn’t work so well?
• What did your competitors do for the Black Friday email marketing campaigns?
• Do you want to drive more customers to your store or focus on online sales?
• Which items were most popular during the Black Friday weekend?
• How to smartly segment your audience to send them more of the right kind of content?

One tip guaranteed to work!

Always provide information to your customers well in advance. Your Shoppers are tech-savvy and they want to be prepared for the holiday sales season way ahead of time. They know to get the best deals in their Black Friday shopping. 81% of customers do online research before purchasing. Make their online shopping decision easier by sending them pre-sale emails with a little teaser included. This will give them all the information they need to be prepared before the decision. 

Choose a responsive Black Friday email template

Very important step. ALERT! You can’t afford to send out a badly designed Black Friday email template. No matter how attractive your deals are if you’re sending out a sale campaign with confusing CTAs, illegible font, and colors that do not resonate well it is a given that your Black Friday email marketing campaign will not serve its purpose. 

Follow these design rules to create the most appealing Black Friday email template:

1. Stick to a simple structure that includes columns (easier to work on making your email responsive).
2. Add a fair mix of images and text (nearly 60/40).
3. Align the fonts and size of your messages.
4. Decide which CTA buttons to use and clearly display them in a contrasting color.
5. Have a look at our Ultimate Guide to Holiday Email marketing to know more.

Download our beautiful Black Friday email template

Do all these sound like too much for you to handle during the holiday season 2020? Don’t panic: you don’t need to hire an experienced designer to get this done for you.

Download our free Black Friday email template here and customize it now using BayEngage’s email template editor. 

Use email content to your advantage

Your Black Friday email needs to be beautifully designed. Yes, no second thoughts about it. But it is not just about being pretty. The design and content should complement each other. The content in the Black Friday email template should also clearly convey the deals, offers, and the message related to Black Friday. Work on making your Black Friday email template and Black Friday emails pretty but don’t forget to enhance it with well-crafted content. 

Be careful with being too mysterious

Are you absolutely sure that everyone knows well who you are and what you offer? If not, time to be very careful with sending emails that only focus on the actual discount.

True that a Black Friday email template with a sleek design and a good CTA has its own magic. But this could work well when you launch a new collection and tease your loyal customers by adding elements of mystery. During the holiday season which is the most competitive time of the year in the customers’ inbox, let’s not try to confuse them with too much mystery. But you can always add a little surprise/suspense effect on what a Black Friday offer can be made of.

Create a sense of urgency in your Black Friday email templates

Creating a sense of urgency in your email template is a time-tested marketing psychology tactic. Black Friday is all about time-sensitive deals and FOMO kicks in when your customers believe they might miss out. To get the maximum open and click-through rates, you need to design your Black Friday email template with an incredible copy and images that drive a sense of urgency.

Use words that focus on deadlines and scarcity such as:

• “Time is running out” 
•  “Get it before it’s gone”
• “Sale ends tomorrow” or “Sale almost over”
• “Last chance” or “While supplies last”
• “Only X days left” or “Only X spots left”

Don’t forget to use the magic marketing words that we’ve found to be successful:

• “Great deal”, “Special offers”, “Prime offers”,
• “Off everything”, “Reduction”, “Only”, “Savings”

Word of caution: Do not use Black Friday email subject lines that don’t deliver what they promise. Such alluring emails might get higher open rates, but if your customers think you’re misleading, they might decide to unsubscribe or send your email directly to their spam folder.

Showcase your products to attract attention

Show your customers clearly what they are looking for. If they’re not able to identify products immediately, highly likely they’ll be annoyed and in a moment they’ll move on to another email. Just like that, you missed a potential customer. So, be very sure to include your products in the Black Friday email templates that will entice people to use these amazing discounts right away.

Show your brand identity in your Black Friday email

If you have not worked on a dedicated email voice or brand language yet, this might be the right time to get started on it. Having a dedicated email voice helps you stand out in your customers’ inboxes especially during crucial times such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This will help you be easily identified. Every other brand will almost have the same wording and similar percentages of discounts, as well as potentially similar designs. Think of different ways in which you can stand out. 

An additional tip for your designers, you don’t have to stick to just black themes while designing emails. You can also include other colors and those colors will turn out to be the new black. Try to use a dark touch only here and there.

We cannot find the best recipe to create the perfect Black Friday email. But the main objective here is to make your customers recognize your brand when they receive your email. So, we suggest that you include the following clearly in your Black Friday email template and also Black Friday emails. 

• Brand identity 
• Logo
• Style
• Voice
• Subject lines
• Images

This will increase our chances of capturing your reader’s attention.

Work on making your Black Friday emails stand out in the inbox

We cannot reinforce this enough that your customers’ inboxes will be overcrowded with so many Black Friday emails. Most likely your customers are going to mark all the emails as spam. But you don’t want the same to happen to your Black Friday email marketing campaign. Let’s discuss different strategies to stand out in your customers’ inboxes.

To make sure your Black Friday emails do not get missed, pay attention to the kind of offers you are displaying. Give your best and add that innovative touch to your campaign.

Few design ideas that can capture your reader’s attention – play with these elements to create an interesting and innovative Black Friday email:

• GIFs
• Videos
• Interactive carousels and accordions
• Shopping within the email

Reward your email audience with exclusive deals

It’s given that you are investing your efforts across many marketing channels such as ads, websites, online stores, social media, etc. But think about this – emails are a consent-based channel and your subscribers have actually chosen to be part of your mailing list. Why not use your Black Friday email marketing campaign to reward your email list for being such a faithful email marketing audience?

• Create deals that are exclusive to your email database – highlight it in the email subject line for a better open rate!
• In addition to the Black Friday deals, offer giveaways
• Take this opportunity to grow your contact lists – Encourage referrals in the body of the email 

Don’t forget to create similar email campaigns for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

One more thing that you can do to make sure that your customers recognize your brand is to pair your Black Friday and your Cyber Monday emails: similar designs, slightly different messages, variation in the color theme.

Time to create your stunning Black Friday email campaign!

Eureka! We have given you all our master tricks. You’re all set to create the best and perfect Black Friday email marketing campaign this season.

Few tips to remember!

1. Choose a responsive email template 
2. Include the right number of CTAs 
3. Select a few carefully-selected images from your brand library and add it to highlight your top products.
4. Respect and reflect on your brand image so your customers know it’s you.
5. Draft interactive content and play around with GIFs to stand out in the inbox.

And if you’re not sure where to start or don’t have time to create innovative Black Friday templates, download TargetBay’s free Black Friday email template here. Making your Black Friday email campaign success couldn’t be easier.